The New Hacker's Dictionary

1201

Sun Microsystems gave out logoized yoyos at SIGPLAN '88. Tourists staying at one of Atlanta's most respectable hotels were subsequently treated to the sight of 200 of the country's top computer scientists testing yo-yo algorithms in the lobby.

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Node:Yu-Shiang Whole Fish, Next:[15077]zap, Previous:[15078]yoyo mode, Up:[15079]= Y =

Yu-Shiang Whole Fish /yoo-shyang hohl fish/ n. obs.

The character gamma (extended SAIL ASCII 0001001), which with a loop in its tail looks like a little fish swimming down the page. The term is actually the name of a Chinese dish in which a fish is cooked whole (not [15080]parsed) and covered with Yu-Shiang (or Yu-Hsiang) sauce. Usage: primarily by people on the MIT LISP Machine, which could display this character on the screen. Tends to elicit incredulity from people who hear about it second-hand.

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Node:= Z =, Previous:[15081]= Y =, Up:[15082]The Jargon Lexicon

= Z =

*[15083]zap:

*[15084]zapped:

*[15085]Zawinski's Law:

*[15086]zbeba:

* [15087]zen:

1203

the OS with a program called `superzap', whose file name is `IMASPZAP' (possibly contrived from I M A SuPerZAP). 5. vt. To erase or reset. 6. To [15103]fry a chip with static electricity. "Uh oh -- I think that lightning strike may have zapped the disk controller."

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Node:zapped, Next:[15104]Zawinski's Law, Previous:[15105]zap,

Up:[15106]= Z =

zapped adj.

Spicy. This term is used to distinguish between food that is hot (in temperature) and food that is spicy-hot. For example, the Chinese appetizer Bon Bon Chicken is a kind of chicken salad that is cold but zapped; by contrast, [15107]vanilla wonton soup is hot but not zapped. See also [15108]oriental food, [15109]laser chicken. See [15110]zap, senses 1 and 2.

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Node:Zawinski's Law, Next:[15111]zbeba, Previous:[15112]zapped,

Up:[15113]= Z =

Zawinski's Law

"Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can." Coined by Jamie Zawinski (who called it the "Law of Software Envelopment") to express his belief that all truly useful programs experience pressure to evolve into toolkits and application platforms (the mailer thing, he says, is just a side effect of that). It is commonly cited, though with widely varying degrees of accuracy.

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1204

Node:zbeba, Next:[15114]zen, Previous:[15115]Zawinski's Law,

Up:[15116]= Z =

zbeba n.

[USENET] The word `moron' in [15117]rot13. Used to describe newbies who are behaving with especial cluelessness.

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Node:zen, Next:[15118]zero, Previous:[15119]zbeba, Up:[15120]= Z =

zen vt.

To figure out something by meditation or by a sudden flash of enlightenment. Originally applied to bugs, but occasionally applied to problems of life in general. "How'd you figure out the buffer allocation problem?" "Oh, I zenned it." Contrast [15121]grok, which connotes a time-extended version of zenning a system. Compare [15122]hack mode. See also [15123]guru.

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Node:zero, Next:[15124]zero-content, Previous:[15125]zen, Up:[15126]=

Z =

zero vt.

1. To set to 0. Usually said of small pieces of data, such as bits or words (esp. in the construction `zero out'). 2. To erase; to discard all data from. Said of disks and directories, where `zeroing' need not involve actually writing zeroes throughout the area being zeroed. One may speak of something being `logically zeroed' rather than being `physically zeroed'. See [15127]scribble.

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1205

Node:zero-content, Next:[15128]Zero-One-Infinity Rule,

Previous:[15129]zero, Up:[15130]= Z =

zero-content adj.

Syn. [15131]content-free.

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Node:Zero-One-Infinity Rule, Next:[15132]zeroth,

Previous:[15133]zero-content, Up:[15134]= Z =

Zero-One-Infinity Rule prov.

"Allow none of [15135]foo, one of [15136]foo, or any number of [15137]foo." A rule of thumb for software design, which instructs one to not place [15138]random limits on the number of instances of a given entity (such as: windows in a window system, letters in an OS's filenames, etc.). Specifically, one should either disallow the entity entirely, allow exactly one instance (an "exception"), or allow as many as the user wants - address space and memory permitting.

The logic behind this rule is that there are often situations where it makes clear sense to allow one of something instead of none. However, if one decides to go further and allow N (for N > 1), then why not N+1? And if N+1, then why not N+2, and so on? Once above 1, there's no excuse not to allow any N; hence, [15139]infinity.

Many hackers recall in this connection Isaac Asimov's SF novel "The Gods Themselves" in which a character announces that the number 2 is impossible - if you're going to believe in more than one universe, you might as well believe in an infinite number of them.

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1206

Node:zeroth, Next:[15140]zigamorph, Previous:[15141]Zero-One-Infinity

Rule, Up:[15142]= Z =

zeroth /zee'rohth/ adj.

First. Among software designers, comes from C's and LISP's 0-based indexing of arrays. Hardware people also tend to start counting at 0 instead of 1; this is natural since, e.g., the 256 states of 8 bits correspond to the binary numbers 0, 1, ..., 255 and the digital devices known as `counters' count in this way.

Hackers and computer scientists often like to call the first chapter of a publication `Chapter 0', especially if it is of an introductory nature (one of the classic instances was in the First Edition of [15143]K&R). In recent years this trait has also been observed among many pure mathematicians (who have an independent tradition of numbering from 0). Zero-based numbering tends to reduce [15144]fencepost errors, though it cannot eliminate them entirely.

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Node:zigamorph, Next:[15145]zip, Previous:[15146]zeroth, Up:[15147]= Z

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zigamorph /zig'*-morf/ n.

1. Hex FF (11111111) when used as a delimiter or [15148]fence character. Usage: primarily at IBM shops. 2. [proposed] n. The Unicode non-character U+FFFF (1111111111111111), a character code which is not assigned to any character, and so is usable as end-of-string. (Unicode is a 16-bit character code intended to cover all of the world's writing systems, including Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Chinese, hiragana, katakana, Devanagari, Thai, Laotian and many other scripts - support for [15149]elvish is planned for a future release).

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1207

Node:zip, Next:[15150]zipperhead, Previous:[15151]zigamorph,

Up:[15152]= Z =

zip vt.

[primarily MS-DOS] To create a compressed archive from a group of files using PKWare's PKZIP or a compatible archiver. Its use is spreading now that portable implementations of the algorithm have been written.

Commonly used as follows: "I'll zip it up and send it to you." See [15153]tar and feather.

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Node:zipperhead, Next:[15154]zombie, Previous:[15155]zip, Up:[15156]=

Z =

zipperhead n.

[IBM] A person with a closed mind.

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Node:zombie, Next:[15157]zorch, Previous:[15158]zipperhead,

Up:[15159]= Z =

zombie n.

[Unix] A process that has died but has not yet relinquished its process table slot (because the parent process hasn't executed a wait(2) for it yet). These can be seen in ps(1) listings occasionally. Compare [15160]orphan.

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Node:zorch, Next:[15161]Zork, Previous:[15162]zombie, Up:[15163]= Z =

zorch /zorch/